Ratchet

Ratchet, from Las Vegas singer-songwriter Shamir Bailey, feels like a study in the best dance-pop of the past decade. It's an honest, earnest pop record, as Shamir elaborates on the gutsy melodies of his early demos and singles.

"Growing up in Vegas and being the weird one out, you kind of have to put on a tough face," Shamir Bailey tells those tuned into his Ratchet Radio playlist on Spotify. There’s both weirdness and toughness in droves on his debut album-cum-deliverance, Ratchet. Less than two years after sending a demo cross-country to Brooklyn's Godmode imprint, Shamir signed to XL Recordings—a label known for pop outliers like Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., and FKA twigs—and got his face on a Times Square billboard. On Ratchet, an honest, earnest pop record, Shamir elaborates on the gutsy melodies of those early demos and singles and makes good on the hype.

Produced entirely by Godmode label head Nick Sylvester (a former Pitchfork contributor), Ratchet feels like a study in the best dance-pop of the past decade, from the dank basslines of the Ed Banger collective to the melodic, moody prance of Hot Chip, the flamboyance of the Scissor Sisters to the technical, four-on-the-floor finesse of Azari & III. This powers a record that’s about the sine wave of adolescent emotions; Shamir, a cherub-faced fashion kid with a voice like Crystal Waters, flips easily between confidence and vulnerability. The piano house/diva vocal-influenced R&B track "I Know It’s a Good Thing", from last year’s Northtown EP, merely hinted at how dance-indebted this record is. Acid basslines chug and squelch on "Call It Off" and "Hot Mess", and "Make a Scene" and "Head in the Clouds" both ascend to frenzied, laser synth peaks.

House, particularly within the context of its early black, gay roots, has been described as liberating. There’s a freedom narrative at play on Ratchet too, as Shamir excises those childhood demons while calling upon the showy, campy glamor of his hometown. "Vegas, we’re sinners all right, at least at night," Shamir warbles on the lounge-y intro track, named after the city. Shamir's voice is the most immediately unusual element; whether singing or rapping, he moves from comely to coy to cocky, depending on what the song calls for. Like on "Youth", a nu-disco lament with a soulful breakdown, where he pours his tinsel voice over a double-time rattle and a Morse-quick buzz synth. Each word trickles out slowly and precise at first, and then it’s like he backs away from the mic to sing from the gut, trilling and ad-libbing to a rapturous breakdown.

Squint past his vocal brass and the dazzle of the production and there’s that weirdness and toughness. "On the Regular", a gleaming, dance-rap contagion, is the kitschy lure into the album, more subdued than Azealia Banks’ "212" but sharing a spiritual bounce and temerity. "Don’t try me, I’m not a free sample...Haters get the bird, more like the eagle," he alternates between a regal, almost sensual moan and breathless rapping, which dilutes the crassness of alluding to dropping down and thrusting his crotch in someone’s face. And on the wry ballad "Demon", about a life-altering relationship, "If I'm a demon, baby, you're the beast that made me." It’s a beautiful, delicate melody that’s slightly blue, and brings Shamir as close as he’ll get to straight up vulnerability on a pulsing, in-your-face record. Perhaps most indicative of Ratchet’s pseudo-redemptive, leaving-Las-Vegas arc is "In for the Kill", an orchestral freak-out that finds Shamir looking back to say, "I’ll be back someday, and when I do I promise you, I won’t make the same mistake." The adult Shamir has reconstituted his precious voice as armor.

He might resemble past baby-faced rap and R&B stars like IMx or TBTBT or B2K, minus the hyper-alpha masculinity, but Shamir fits in with today’s genre-bending pop stars. Ratchet is as melodically and thematically confident as Rihanna and Willow Smith, but his aesthetic—a Vegas pixie, a black man making poetic and flagrantly rococo dance pop—is a challenge and a reclamation, not just of "ratchet," but the queer, racialized roots of house music and the unabashedly flamboyant history of black pop music.

We revere Prince and are fascinated by Young Thug, both unapologetically outre musicians walking the line of black masculinity, but they qualify that with reams of virile, hetero fuck-anthems. Frank Ocean came out and said it. Shamir, on the other hand, conveys a more ambiguous sensuality that presents a challenge to pop—his lane, for sure—especially given his soft, high-pitched, luminous voice. He doesn’t tell us anything about his sexuality, but we all know how people can treat artistic, effete boys. What Ratchet’s 10 songs of self-discovery say without saying at all is that there’s liberation on the dancefloor.